As for World events of the 20th Century? I think that the World would be most different had Frans Ferdinand's driver not taken that wrong turn.

As much as I dislike being serious, I would have to agree that this single event probably did more to shape the events of the 20th century than anything else. At very least, it lead to WWI, which the outcome, we all know, directly and indirectly, lead to WWII, the Cold War and pretty much everything else we have dealt with concerning international politics, technological innovation, and so on and so forth.

But then again, all of the things that lead up to the shooting of the Archduke during the 19th Century and the years before that could be considered the pivotal moment for the 20th Century. You know what, the most important event of the 20th Century probably involved a couple of people in a garden, a snake, and an apple.

Civil rights movement. The commitment to eliminate prejudice and a commitment to the underlying principle that all men are truly created equal and endowed with certain unalienable Rights. I am hoping that the 21st century won't be known for the opposite result.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Henry Ford, his Model-T, and the introduction of the assembly line. I'm sure someone else would of invented it sooner or later, but the fact remains that mass production has or will have an impact on society far greater than any war. Just consider what impact global warming or peak oil will have on society. If you take Kunstler seriously World War II will look like a picnic compared to the turmoil and death we are about to expierence.

This Bear's pick as the most important event of the 20th Century.....the rise of the United States of America to become the strongest power in the history of the world. And, for the most part.....that power was used to protect the peace, not control the masses.

We are not just talking military power, but that is certainly on the list.

Military Power.....No other country ever had a military like the USA has. No other country was able to convert thousands of manufacturing plants into industrial complexes producing the goods of war in such a short time. The USA became the leader in manufacturing, partially because of a will and desire to "stay free".

The USSR tried the same thing. They even converted MORE of their gross domestic product to military.....but they never caught up with the USA. Their Communist system had too many flaws that required patching. Say goodnight, Ruskies.

Economic Power.....The USA was already on the bubble of being the dominant world economic power when the 20th Century came around. Blessed with incredible natural resources, a Statue of Liberty that welcomed immigrants, and a wonderful "we can do anything" attitude, the USA moved into the top spot and has stayed there. (Sure, places like India and China are moving forward, exploiting those things we taught them. We are still way ahead.)

Techno Power.....Since the beginning of the 20th Century the USA has been a leader in innovation, invention, industry. Great inventions are not just "made in the USA".....but most of them were.

Culture Power.....Like it or not, the USA has been the world leader in exporting culture. Movies, rock and roll music, country music.....the artists and their offerings have changed the world. (OK, Germany.....we will give you some of the classical dudes. OK, Japan, Italy.....we will give you some opera stuff.)

Freedom Power.....We could list hundreds of things that are wrong with the USA. But, the line of folks who want in is not getting any shorter. The people standing in that line are acutely aware of the influence on the world of the United States Of America.

I'd vote for computers and the internet. Not that I have the brain power to analyze it, just seems like they have facilitated many things that would not have been accomplished otherwise (medical research, space travel, exchange of knowledge, hurricane tracking, etc.).

The Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor certainly did a lot to change the world order. Got the US into the war, both in Asia and Europe, led to the defeat of Hitler, the dropping of an atomic bomb, the dispute over Berlin and the Cold War, the Marshall Plan, NATO, Warsaw Pact... seems to me that this one event set off a very important chain of events.

The U.S. had been provoking the Japanese to make a first attack, thus giving Roosevelt the public outcry he needed to mobilize the U.S. draft and entry into the war. We were already in deep with the Brits through lend lease.

Likewise, I think WWI was also fairly inevitable (with proximate causes originating well before 1900) regardless of whether Archduke Franz Ferdinand had been assassinated. The major powers had been forming alliances and were looking to expand their markets to other countries. War was simply a means for economic expansion in the then young era of the Nation State (as it unfortunetly still is).

I would argue that the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 - resulting in the Treaty of Versailles, was THE single event with the most far-reaching ramifications. The French and British imposed ruinous levels of reparations on Germany, leading to an annual inflation rate as high as 3.25 million % in the early 1920's! If the winners had been more conciliatory - as in the case of the Yalta conference in 1945, with the Marshall Plan for rebuilding Germany following WWII, the desperate conditions that spawned the rise of Hitler, would not have been present.

Instead, an isolationist US congress, was unwilling to ratify Wilson's 14 points which left his plans to establish a league of nations, DOA. The pent up vengeance of David Lloyd George and especially Georges Clemenceau overwhelmed the politically limp Wilson, to concoct a document that would brew a perfect storm of German Nationalism. Much subsequent evil resulted from this vengeance driven document that was a bad decision.

The Apollo Moon landings were the most significant rite of passage for the human species since we evolved to live on land instead of water some half billion years ago.

I would also add the development of audio recording technology. Plus transistors and valves allowed amplified music without which modern popular music and rock n' roll, could not exist.

Last edited by dobopoq; 28 Sep 2005 at 5:05 AM.

"The current American way of life is founded not just on motor transportation but on the religion of the motorcar, and the sacrifices that people are prepared to make for this religion stand outside the realm of rational criticism." -Lewis Mumford

[QUOTE=dobopoq]The U.S. had been provoking the Japanese to make a first attack, thus giving Roosevelt the public outcry he needed to mobilize the U.S. draft and entry into the war. We were already in deep with the Brits through lend lease.

I would argue that the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 - resulting in the Treaty of Versailles, was THE single event with the most far-reaching ramifications. The French and British imposed ruinous levels of reparations on Germany, leading to an annual inflation rate as high as 3.25 million % in the early 1920's! If the winners had been more conciliatory - as in the case of the Yalta conference in 1945, with the Marshall Plan for rebuilding Germany following WWII, the desperate conditions that spawned the rise of Hitler, would not have been present.

Who can blame the French and British. They lost 1.8 and 1 million respectively of a whole generation. It was the first mass scale war, and as such was a total war. Germany were the agressors in the war which left both France and Britain's treasuries empty. I agree though. Wilson was shafted by the US congress, leaving the League of Nations as a worthless honking shop.

The assasination of Archduke Ferdinand, and the subsequent declaration of war on Serbia by Prussia which allowed Germany to opportunistically declare war on Belgium (to grab it's colonies) was the most important event of the 20th century. The first world war weakened Russia to the extent that the bolshieviks were able to begin their October revolution, setting the tone for the next 70 years. It destroyed Germany, leading to the Second World War, and it was the beginning of the USA ignoring George Washingtons entreaty to "Avoid European Entanglements", thus leading toa less isolationist outlook, and the eventual rise of the US to claim the century for itself.

The First World War also signified the end of 8,000 years of agrarian society. Pretty important point.

Although the emancipation of women after 8,000 years of second class citizenery is an important one.

Who can blame the French and British. They lost 1.8 and 1 million respectively of a whole generation. It was the first mass scale war, and as such was a total war. Germany were the agressors in the war which left both France and Britain's treasuries empty. I agree though. Wilson was shafted by the US congress, leaving the League of Nations as a worthless honking shop.

I believe there were three nations that were "the agressors". Germany was just the last one standing at the end of the war. The Ottoman-Turks (sp?) got split up and....I don't recall what the other country was. Any way you slice it, it wasn't reasonable to make Germany bear the entire cost of the war.

However, my understanding is that -- in addition to the excess burden of war reparations on Germany -- The Great Depression did a lot to create the conditions for WW2. It was global, it was partly due to environmental issues (like "the dust bowl") rather than political ones, the world lacked the financial institutions we have now to address such crises and prevent banks from closing, etc. I believe the creation of The World Bank was one of the things they did as part of their commitment of "Never Again".

Sometimes, things are such that a situation is just waiting for a trigger event to set the whole thing off. And it is rare that an individual has the personal restraint and compassion to try to truly END a conflict. The general who accepted Lee's surrender at Appomatox was a lifelong alcoholic and Loser Extraordinaire except on the field of battle, where he shined as a leader. I have read somewhere that the compassion he exhibited and the promises he made that day likely spared the U.S. from having a repeat of the Civil War in much the same way that WW2 was basically a "repeat" of WW1. You see that in a lot of places -- fueds so old no one really knows anymore what started it, yet both sides are dead set on being the one to Finish it...and the cycle continues.

The assasination of Archduke Ferdinand, and the subsequent declaration of war on Serbia by Prussia which allowed Germany to opportunistically declare war on Belgium (to grab it's colonies) was the most important event of the 20th century

I defer to you as a European, on your better understanding of WWI, but, in your opinion, wasn't WWI inevitable? I believe it was.

The scramble for Africa followed on the heels of the decline of slavery during the 19th century; Europe was maturing toward more centralized political power (ie Bismarck). The age of mass production was in full swing, and manufacturing capitalists needed to expand the markets for their products because overproduction had already saturated the home market. Africa was the last pristine area upon which to colonize and as the European Nations rose to be regional powers, they felt compelled to jockey for position or else face economic stagnation. Gavrilo Princip's action was only a spark that started a fire that had been building for some time.

Because the chain of events that provoked WWI were IMO, gradual and complex, I view it as having root causes that originated well within the 19th century. Yet I agree, as Michelle Zone had iterated, WWII was really a continuation of a single war that began in 1914 (and some might say, didn't really end until 1989, or 2001?). I'm not trying to blame anyone. There was simply no precedent on a scale with WWI for the Allied Victors to compare it to.

So in the most general sense, the seeds of WWI were planted in the 19th century, but much of what followed could have been quite different or non-existent, had The Versailles Treaty not been so punitive. We finally got it right in 1945, but by then it had spawned the much more dangerous world of the nuclear age.

by Boru regarding WWI:

it was the beginning of the USA ignoring George Washingtons entreaty to "Avoid European Entanglements", thus leading toa less isolationist outlook, and the eventual rise of the US to claim the century for itself.

Interesting point. We had long imperialised with impunity in the western hemisphere, but were it not for WWI, the US would likely not have been spurned into playing such the dominant role as it did in the 20th century.

The First World War also signified the end of 8,000 years of agrarian society. Pretty important point.

Again, I would say this occurred more as result of the rise of industry and mass production in cities for several decades previously.

Related to your last two points, is that when women worked in armaments factories during WWI, it was really the first time they were actually making their own money for work they do (as opposed to farming or housework/childrearing) in the absence of their husbands. It is no coincidence that the 19th ammendent to the US constitution, granting women suffrage, followed so closely upon the important role women played in "arming" the combatants.

"The current American way of life is founded not just on motor transportation but on the religion of the motorcar, and the sacrifices that people are prepared to make for this religion stand outside the realm of rational criticism." -Lewis Mumford

Europe was pretty industrial by 1914. That's what made WWI so horrible.

Really I'd say the biggest event in "recent" history was the French Revolution. That marked the beginning of the end of a political system that had successfully controlled Europe for well over a thousand years, and another one (colonalization) that had controlled the rest of the world for hundreds.

Of course after the revolution things quieted down for much of the 19th century as the Victorians were able to hold everything together, mainly through the political brinksmanship of the treaty system though. Once that system ran to its inevitable conclusion (WWI). After the horrors of that war crowns started falling like rain, and the inevitable civil wars and dictatorships flowed in to fill the power vacuum. Once you make that many countries that unstable I think a major bash (WWII) becomes inevitable. After Europe bloodied itself to a pulp in WWII, decolonilization was inevitable, forming a new power vacuum that was filled temporarily by the brinksmanship of the Cold War, to be replaced with a new round of dictatorships and chaos.

I don't see the 20th century as a century containing many turning points but rather a series of forgone conclusions caused by movements started in some cases centuries before coming together at the same time to produce the bloodiest and most tumultuous century on record.

I didn't get this at first, but good point. Arguably, the birth control pill has had a bigger impact on social relations than women's suffrage.

And the changes to the balance of power between the sexes were a huge part of the 20th century. (Rising divorce rate, dual career couples/women entering the labor force, more single mothers, alimony and child support, sexual revolution, female life expectancy surpassing that of men, etc.)

"The current American way of life is founded not just on motor transportation but on the religion of the motorcar, and the sacrifices that people are prepared to make for this religion stand outside the realm of rational criticism." -Lewis Mumford